Social life- How to build a pyramid in style

I am not talking about the manual labourers who built the great pyramids of Egypt, instead the men behind the labourers, advisers and such. Archaeologists excavating a city just 400 meters south of the Sphinx have uncovered a house presumed to have belonged to high ranking officials some 4,500 years ago.

Inside the remains of the mansion bones from young cattle and teeth from leopards have been discovered, suggesting that its residents ate and dressed like royalty.

Seals containing titulary include “the scribe of the royal box” and “the scribe of the royal school”. Thus, we are given insight in to the officials at Giza in terms of fashion and diet. From the sample of 100,000 bones from a nearby mound, archaeologists could not find a single cow bone over 18 months…so it seems they were eating veal. However, veal is seen as a “luxury” today and could be our inferences on the ramifications such a diet had on ancient Egyptian society. After all, a quicker turn over of cows means having to feed it less and made meat available quicker. The mound may not have just been the rubbish from that one house either, it could have served a wider area including evidently lower class housing. In Egyptian art, forelimbs were offered to deities and as the archaeologists have only recovered hind limbs, it could be asserted that the people of the house were eating remains of offerings.

It is believed that, based on Old Kingdom art, that some high ranking individuals wore leopards skins. If this was the case at Giza, it could explain why only the teeth were found as the skin would have less chance of preservation.